Once upon a time, far far away, there were the old Bird developers
discussing what direction of route flow shall be called import and
export. They decided to say "import to protocol" and "export to table"
when speaking about a protocol. When speaking about a table, they
spoke about "importing to table" and "exporting to protocol".
The latter terminology was adopted in configuration, then also the
bird CLI in commit ea2ae6dd0 started to use it (in year 2009). Now
it's 2018 and the terminology is the latter. Import is from protocol to
table, export is from table to protocol. Anyway, there was still an
import_control hook which executed right before route export.
One thing is funny. There are two commits in April 1999 with just two
minutes between them. The older announces the final settlement
on config terminology, the newer uses the other definition. Let's see
their commit messages as the git-log tool shows them (the newer first):
commit 9e0e485e50
Author: Martin Mares <mj@ucw.cz>
Date: Mon Apr 5 20:17:59 1999 +0000
Added some new protocol hooks (look at the comments for better explanation):
make_tmp_attrs Convert inline attributes to ea_list
store_tmp_attrs Convert ea_list to inline attributes
import_control Pre-import decisions
commit 5056c559c4
Author: Martin Mares <mj@ucw.cz>
Date: Mon Apr 5 20:15:31 1999 +0000
Changed syntax of attaching filters to protocols to hopefully the final
version:
EXPORT <filter-spec> for outbound routes (i.e., those announced
by BIRD to the rest of the world).
IMPORT <filter-spec> for inbound routes (i.e., those imported
by BIRD from the rest of the world).
where <filter-spec> is one of:
ALL pass all routes
NONE drop all routes
FILTER <name> use named filter
FILTER { <filter> } use explicitly defined filter
For all protocols, the default is IMPORT ALL, EXPORT NONE. This includes
the kernel protocol, so that you need to add EXPORT ALL to get the previous
configuration of kernel syncer (as usually, see doc/bird.conf.example for
a bird.conf example :)).
Let's say RIP to this almost 19-years-old inconsistency. For now, if you
import a route, it is always from protocol to table. If you export a
route, it is always from table to protocol.
And they lived happily ever after.
The new MRT protocol is responsible for periodic RIB table dumps in the
MRT format (RFC 6396). Also the existing code for BGP4MP MRT dumps is
refactored and splitted between BGP to MRT protocols, will be more
integrated into MRT in the future.
Example:
protocol mrt {
table "*";
filename "%N_%F_%T.mrt";
period 60;
}
It is partially based on the old MRT code from Pavel Tvrdik.
If export filter is changed during reconfiguration and a route disappears
between reconfiguration and refeed (e.g., if the route is a static route
also removed during the reconfiguration), the route is not withdrawn.
The issue was fixed for regular channels by an earlier patch. This patch
fixes the issue for channels in RA_ACCEPTED mode (first-pass-the-filter),
used by BGP with 'secondary' option.
If export filter is changed during reconfiguration and a route disappears
between reconfiguration and refeed (e.g., if the route is a static route
also removed during the reconfiguration), the route is not withdrawn.
The patch fixes that by adding tx reconfiguration timestamp.
This is a fundamental change of an original (1999) concept of route
processing inside BIRD. During import/export, there was a temporary
ea_list created which was to be used instead of the another one inside
the route itself.
This led to some confusion, quirks, and strange filter code that handled
extended route attributes. Dropping it now.
The protocol interface has changed in an uniform way -- the
`struct ea_list *attrs` argument has been removed from store_tmp_attrs(),
import_control(), rt_notify() and get_route_info().
This patch adds support for source-specific IPv6 routes to BIRD core.
This is based on Dean Luga's original patch, with the review comments
addressed. SADR support is added to network address parsing in confbase.Y
and to the kernel protocol on Linux.
Currently there is no way to mix source-specific and non-source-specific
routes (i.e., SADR tables cannot be connected to non-SADR tables).
Thanks to Toke Hoiland-Jorgensen for the original patch.
Minor changes by Ondrej Santiago Zajicek.
A filter should log messages only if executed explicitly (e.g., during
route export or route import). When a filter is executed for technical
reasons (e.g., to establish whether a route was exported before), it
should run silently.
Add proper support for per-nexthop onlink flag in routes to handle next
hop addresses that are not covered by interface IP ranges. Supported by
kernel and static protocols.
Thanks to Vincent Bernat for the idea.
Some code cleanup, multiple bugfixes, allows to specify also channel
for 'show route export'. Interesting how such apparenty simple thing
like show route cmd has plenty of ugly corner cases.
Basic support for SAFI 4 and 128 (MPLS labeled IP and VPN) for IPv4 and
IPv6. Should work for route reflector, but does not properly handle
originating routes with next hop self.
Based on patches from Jan Matejka.
Anyway, Bird is now capable to insert both MPLS routes and MPLS encap
routes into kernel.
It was (among others) needed to define platform-specific AF_MPLS to 28
as this constant has been assigned in the linux kernel.
No support for BSD now, it may be added in the future.
Dropped struct mpnh and mpnh_*()
Now struct nexthop exists, nexthop_*(), and also included struct nexthop
into struct rta.
Also converted RTD_DEVICE and RTD_ROUTER to RTD_UNICAST. If it is needed
to distinguish between these two cases, RTD_DEVICE is equivalent to
IPA_ZERO(a->nh.gw), RTD_ROUTER is then IPA_NONZERO(a->nh.gw).
From now on, we also explicitely want C99 compatible compiler. We assume
that this 20-year norm should be known almost everywhere.
Kernel protocol calls rt_export_merged(), which used @rte_update_pool for
temporary allocations, supposing it is called from other functions from
rt-table.c that handles locking and flushing of the linpool. Therefore,
linpool was not flushed properly and memory leaked.
Add linpool argument to rt_export_merged() and use @krt_filter_lp when
called from kernel protocol.
Thanks to Justin Cattle and Alexander Frolkin for the bugreport.
(Commit squashed and updated by Ondrej Zajicek)
